There are a number of risks faced by those that are required to transport valuables from one place to another, such as from a business to a place of safe keeping, for example. A primary risk is that of robbery of those valuables while in transit. A secondary risk is that of theft by a courier given the task of transporting the valuables. Several approaches have been taken to reduce such risks, but these approaches are often costly and excessively complex.
In one prior art approach, relatively large and complicated portable cases have been designed to protect valuables. Such cases feature formidable physical security and tamper monitoring systems. European Patent Nos. 2,347,078 and 2,510,506 teach transport cases that feature a dispensing system and electronic monitoring system that are designed to devalue cash inside with a devaluing agent such as glue (2,347,078) or ink (2,510,506) when the transport case is tampered with. Another transport system is taught by Villiger in U.S. Pat. No. 7,707,950. This system is large in physical size and weight to support an elaborate dispensing system. The complexity and size of such approaches make them costly.
In an alternative approach, smaller cases have been created that reduce the cost, complexity, and weight of devaluing agents designed for 100% coverage of cash stored within and instead focus on generating attention in the event of a robbery. Several such products use loud sirens and can be configured to release smoke or dye inside the case to partially stain the contents and the robber. The tamper detection methods used tend to be simpler than the large products addressed above and typically involve the use of panic buttons and or tethered pull cords.
In one such example, a transport bag apparatus that incorporates a staining agent to mark cash stored within, but not necessarily to the level of destruction or devaluing is addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,028. This patent also includes a high voltage generator for the purpose of electrically shocking a robber, and a siren to draw attention, as well as, a mechanism for remote wireless activation of these countermeasures in response to an attempted theft.
Another example is a portable personal security system as taught by U.S. Pat. No. 5,748,089 in which a smoke or sparkler device is ported intentionally outside of a transport bag for the purpose of grabbing attention and alarming a robber rather than staining contents inside the bag.
These types of systems may require that the custodian manually deploy the countermeasures by pushing a panic button or switch or otherwise rely on rip cords or breakaway features to set off the alarm. In a snatch and run robbery, the custodian may not have time to realize the attempted theft is taking place and manually activate the alarm feature. Rip cords and break away features are also prone to false activation causing unnecessary public distress and costly smoke replacement. These systems also fail to monitor whether the bag itself is actually securely closed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,448 proposes a method for monitoring whether security bags are securely locked by monitoring the state of a specially designed zipper lock mechanism. This patent teaches a method of combining a standard zipper lock with a circuit board for the purpose of monitoring lock closures. The standard style of zipper lock described has the limitation of needing to be sized precisely to fit a particular zipper housing body. A second limitation of this approach is it requires carefully backing the zipper body into the lock housing prior to pressing down on the zipper lock capture mechanism. If alignment of the zipper body is not proper, the zipper lock will not engage and the bag will not be secured.
Some of the recent systems use wireless radios to monitor the proximity of the case to a transporter, such as a guard, and are configured to deploy when the case gets too far from the guard. Examples of these types of system are produced by HDH Security Systems, Ltd. and in particular include their Proximity Case™ model. Such systems suffer from employing a method of pairing the case to a guard's key fob that are complicated to perform or are not supportive of simple reassignment to other guard fobs as would be helpful in a deployment of secure cases in a fleet of users. They also lack the ability to track whether the case is securely closed and locked and to keep track of which guard has maintained custody of the case.